


for the garden where all love ends

by bellpickle



Series: loves: a couplet [2]
Category: Borderlands
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jack as a bad dad, M/M, also everyone but Jack is older than in canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 23:36:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8077789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellpickle/pseuds/bellpickle
Summary: "So why did you revive a crazy asshole like me?" Jack asked, unable to hide the growl in his voice. "What the hell do you want?"A fire grew within Rhys, the flames licking at Jack with the same heat and intensity as when they first laid eyes on each other. "I want you to prove them wrong. I want you to show me that you're just as great as you claimed to be."-----Handsome Jack gets a second shot at living.





	1. Reboot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AVoresmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVoresmith/gifts).



> Though this is a standalone story, there are subtle references and allusions to [the first fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5784007/chapters/13329889) in this series. That said, this can be read and understood on its own.
> 
> Dedicated to Aviy. If all goes according to plan, this fic should have many things that you will like. :3

Jack awoke from a shroudlike sleep, uncertain of time or place. He struggled to sit up from his (soft? why the hell was it soft?) mattress; his limbs were oddly difficult to maneuver, as though his considerable muscles could no longer support his own weight. A slimy white film coated his naked body, sparing only his head. Jack gingerly poked a concentrated mound of the mystery goop and found that the substance had the texture of softened lard.

In short, he felt fuckin gross. And he had no idea where he was.

The room's walls glowed a sterile, glassy silver, reflective chrome panels forming a neat grid on all four sides. There were cameras embedded in each corner of the ceiling, invisible save for the glint of the lens. His own mildly bewildered, mostly irritated face stared back at him from the opposite wall.

Jack ripped the bedsheet halfway off the mattress and scrubbed at the layer of gunk covering his skin. Eyeing the camera nearest to him, he said in the most maniacally threatening voice he could muster, "To whichever fanboy loser had the brilliant idea of rubbing their jizz all over me, you better have some fast frickin running legs." His threat came out in a raspy croak, as if he had been hit with a sudden and severe case of emphysema. He frowned. The fuck?

" _That fanboy loser would be me._ "

He stilled at the voice filling the small room. It had a distinctly masculine tone: smooth baritone notes sinking into him like a soothing balm, conveying amusement and caution and curiosity all in a few short syllables. The voice sounded unfamiliar but it was not one Jack minded hearing more of.

"So, champ, you fast on your legs?"

" _Mine are pretty long, but I prefer to use them for better things than running._ (Jack smirked at the brazen innuendo. Oh, he definitely liked this one.) _As for **your** legs, I suggest you avoid straining them for the next few days. Or any other part of your body._ "

Jack flexed his arm experimentally. His bicep tightened, shivered, and then flattened in exhaustion. A muscle relaxant? he wondered. The Godzilla of muscle relaxants, maybe, like the imported black market crap in Pandora. But where and when did this guy get the chance to slip it into him? He tried to tease out any recollection of the previous day, but his memories slipped through his grasp like tendrils of fog. The last thing he clearly remembered was using Roland's ECHOcomm to taunt the vault hunters. But he had the uncanny sense that that particular event had taken place days ago. If not longer.

" _I assume you have questions._ "

Patronizing little shit, Jack thought, teeth gnashing. He couldn't sense any malice in the man's words ... but that didn't mean it wasn't there, lurking in the pauses and the things left unsaid. "Where am I?" he demanded, testing the waters.

" _Helios._ " Under normal circumstances, the answer would have inspired relief. Instead, Jack curled inwards, eyes narrowing as he surveyed the room a second time. He knew Helios intimately, committed every inch of it to memory, mapped out every room himself and this place sure as shit wasn't one of them. There was a long, unnatural pause, and for the first time Jack sensed hesitation. Then the man finally added, " _To be more specific, this is Helios One._ "

For once Jack found himself robbed of words, no easy insult or quip funneling from mind to mouth. He felt a simmering unease, something very very wrong that crept closer and closer, obscured in shadow. " _We tried to backup as much data as we could,_ " the stranger continued, " _But there's still a lot you'll need to process in real time. At least three weeks' worth of information, according to the analysts._ "

Jack's ears zeroed in on the word 'backup'. It was an oddly specific choice of verb and the subtle implications made his gut churn. "Sorry sweetcheeks, but that 'you'll find out when you're ready' crap ain't gonna cut it. I need answers now."

" _I can give you answers, but I can't guarantee you'll like them._ "

"Try me."

He heard a long exhalation, a resigned tunneling of breath. " _There's a remote at your bedside. Click the blue button._ "

Scooting his body to the edge of the bed required a conscious orchestration of muscle, causing Jack to grimace from the effort. He slammed his finger against the button and heard a low hum followed by a mechanical buzz. Pink light squeezed into the room through a widening slit, temporarily blinding him. Elpis moonlight. His eyes adjusted after several drawn out blinks, and when he caught a clear glimpse of the moon, he immediately understood what the man wanted him to see. The H-shaped shadow of Helios, now noticeably larger than he remembered, skimmed across the moon's smooth, unblemished surface. Not a single visible trace remained of the spiral rift that once scarred its face.

" _It took over a decade, but Elpis eventually healed itself. Which is a big, flashing invitation for Dahl to start mining it all over again. Maybe the second time around, it'll stay broken._ "

Jack gazed upon the rejuvenated moon, enlightened to nothing and everything all at once. Even he found it strange how easily he accepted something so impossible. Maybe if a man saw enough insanity, he could swallow just about anything life shoved down his throat. He re-tapped the remote's blue button and the window shuttered close.

" _I have a meeting to attend, but my assistant is on his way to you now. You'll know him when you see him._ " There was another slight hesitation as the man added, " _Anything else before I go?_ "

Of all the questions Jack was itching to ask (namely: "what the hell", "is this a friggin joke", and "why do I feel like I just crawled out some chick's birth canal"), one in particular thrummed to the forefront of his mind. "So, princess. What do I call you?"

The man laughed, the sound of it rolling through him in warm, gentle waves. " _My name is Rhys. But princess works too._ " A pause. Then, " _I doubt this means anything to you, but I've been waiting to meet you for a long time._ " Something contradictory folded itself within the layers of the man's voice, an overt coldness smothering a covert eagerness to please. Jack found the latter emotion particularly interesting. The quicker he dissected that little nugget the better.

"Another fan of mine, huh? No wonder I'm buck ass nude. Like what you see?" Jack stretched his body along the length of the mattress, shamelessly exposing himself.

If his exhibitionism fazed Rhys in the slightest, he didn't show it. " _I haven't decided yet. These days, it takes a lot to satisfy me._ "

Jack grinned directly at the camera across from him. This was a game he knew well. "Give it time, princess. No one resists me for long."

" _So I've heard. Either way, I look forward to seeing what you do from here on out._ " There was an abrupt silence, and just when Jack thought his voice had left him for good, Rhys said, " _Welcome home, Handsome Jack. Good night._ " And then he was gone.

Once he began paying attention, really paying attention, it dawned on Jack that the man's voice sounded too near, like its origin existed someplace deep within him, its echoes reverberating off the walls of his skull.

A voice in his head. Because his life really needed that extra dose of crazy.

* * *

What most surprised Jack about Rhys's assistant was the familiarity of its design. Sure the material of the frame—a beautiful azure chrome of an unknown origin—completely differed from the metals he had written in the margins of his original schematics, and the body itself had more joints than he envisioned, allowing the bot to move with an eerie human-like grace. But otherwise, it was the same crude skeleton he had designed for himself long ago, during a drug-and-paranoia-fueled all-nighter in his office. In the space of just a few hours, he had cooked up a wild fantasy of building his own personal robot army; instead, his soldier had been reduced to some dude's lackey. There was probably a poignant, allegorical lesson to be uncovered there, maybe something about ambition and legacy, but Jack didn't care enough to puzzle it out.

The soft hiss of a sliding panel announced the bot's arrival. It walked with a measured gait, approaching him as cautiously as a spectator would a caged beast. Its single red eye scanned the length of his body and said, 「I HAVE BEEN INSTRUCTED NOT TO HARM YOU. BUT IF YOU PROVE TO BE TOO DANGEROUS, I WILL NOT HESITATE TO USE EXCESSIVE FORCE.」

Jack responded with a single slow roll of his eyes. "Oh really? Tell me, genius, how exactly do you expect me to be a danger to anyone in my," he paused to gesture at himself and then the empty room, "current state? What am I gonna do, wave my dick at you in a threatening way?"

「IT IS NOT THE WEAPON WE FEAR BUT THE MAN WHO WIELDS IT.」

"Says the only guy in the room with a gun."

A puff of hot air whistled softly from one of the bot's hidden orifices. The mechanized equivalent of a sigh. 「DO YOU WANT ME TO SHOW YOU WHERE THE SHOWER IS OR NOT?」

The bot activated a panel, which folded backwards to reveal a short passageway that lead directly to a private bathroom. There was a line of steel railings drilled along the sides of the walls, which Jack leaned his weight against to lessen the strain on his muscles; his limbs still shook violently with his every exertion. He sat under the shower spray just long enough to wash the slime off his skin, then dragged himself back to the bedroom. A towel and a set of clothes sat on his newly made bed. The clothes were an exact replica of his usual outfit, all the way down to the Hyperion branded boxers. It was unsettling, but hell, what about his situation wasn't.

Jack slowly worked the clothes on, piece by piece. "Mind telling me what that crap was that I just washed off my body?"

The bot stood vigilant in the opposite corner, keeping its wary eye squarely centered on him. 「IT IS A FLUID EXCRETION THAT OCCURS WHEN A CLONED EPIDERMIS FIRST RECEIVES NUTRIENTS.」

Jack froze in place, the hem of his yellow sweater stretched just above his shoulders. "Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying I'm a clone?"

The bot quietly whirred as it considered its answer. 「KIND OF.」

"Kind of? I'm 'kind of' a clone? What the hell does that even mean?"

「I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DISCLOSE THAT INFORMATION. LEVEL TEN SECURITY CLEARANCE IS REQUIRED.」

"And what's my security level?"

「THREE.」

Jack ground his teeth so hard his molars squeaked in protest. An irrational emotion swept through him, an angry pulse at his temple, fingers twitching with the desire to expose the bot's inner wiring, to tear it to pieces, to reduce his own semi-creation into a scattered heap, divide the sum of its parts till there was nothing left of this insignificant barely sentient _thing_ that dared to belittle Handsome fucking Jack.

He took a deep breath, willing his urges to pass. Just walking twenty feet exhausted him, much less getting into a fistfight with a godforsaken robot. He had to do the more rational, boring thing. For now at least.

"So what _can_ you tell me? And for chrissake, make it something useful."

They started where he ended: with a video of his own death. It was filmed at an odd angle, the camera tilted upwards from its place on the ground, Lilith's figure taking up most of the frame. Only half his body was visible, but even with the cropped view, it was obvious what had happened. He had been killed by a goddamn pat on the head. Just one tap and boom, gone, winked out of existence like a blip on a radar. And of course his mask fell off too because why the hell not. What a shitshow.

Jack watched the short recording over and over, scrutinizing the grainy pixels as if they held the key to the universe. Though he had said all kinds of things in the seconds leading up to his death, his exact last words had been "goddamn child-killing bandits." Hearing it triggered something within him, and for a moment Jack came dangerously close to recalling his daughter's, his Angel's last words, a bitter hate-filled sentence seared onto him like a brand. He quickly fled from the memory, repressing it to the gallows of his mind.

When he finally finished, he clicked the screen off with a press of the remote and returned his attention to the bot. It was time to ask the big question. "How long has it been since I died?"

「FIFTEEN YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS, AND TWENTY-ONE DAYS.」

For a while, Jack just stared and let the magnitude of the words sink in. Fifteen years. If he had lived through them, he'd be damn near sixty now.

「WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL YOU THE HOURS, MINUTES, AND SECONDS?」

Jack grimaced, his mouth flattening to a line. "No."

Instead, he asked the bot to fill him in on all that had happened between then and now, devouring every scrap of information thrown his way. The hours melted away, and by the end of the third day, he gained a rudimentary understanding of the world he now found himself in, as well as Hyperion's place within it.

But one thing, one specific bit of information was conspicuously absent from all the files: just who the hell was running Hyperion _now_?

* * *

Something of a routine emerged, alongside a lethal restlessness. Every morning the bot greeted Jack with several tomes worth of material to study. He received his (surprisingly decent) meals at fixed intervals: 8:00, 13:00, and 18:00 on the dot. Even when the bot wasn't around, he still had the creeping suspicion that someone, somewhere was watching him.

He felt like a caged lion, slowly losing its damned mind. He struggled to keep himself preoccupied, training his mind and body with an almost Spartan dedication. After two weeks, the limp faded from his walk. That morning, when the bot arrived and observed Jack walking unencumbered, it did something unexpected.

It left the door open.

「GO TO THE ELEVATOR AT THE END OF THE HALLWAY.」

And at that, Jack practically leapt out, uncaring of any dangers that lay ahead. The hallway beyond looked like an extension of his room, the walls made of the same reflective silver panels. He caught sight of his own triumphant expression, which deflated upon hearing:

「REMEMBER THAT WE ARE WATCHING YOU. ALWAYS.」

The sharp, satisfying click of teeth echoed through the hall as Jack gritted his together, the corners of his mouth curling upwards in a rictus of giddy malice. He glanced over his shoulder, staring point blank at the bot's single red eye. "Go ahead, punk. You and whoever else can watch me all you want. Just don't get in my way."

Sliding double-doors bookended the short corridor, which opened automatically upon his approach. Inside, there were no buttons to press nor were there numbers to indicate what floor he was on ... or which one he was heading to.

The elevator's ascent was so smooth that Jack barely sensed it. When the doors opened once more, he faced a domed room that felt deeply familiar, despite the strangeness of its appearance. The entirety of the huge, hollowed out space at least doubled that of its predecessor. This new office featured several new installations, including a spiral staircase leading to a second floor balcony. His statues were long gone ... but considering how long Jack himself had been gone, their absence was to be expected. A gaudy gold-coated fountain sat in their stead at the dome's center, depicting a titan holding the sun in its palm.

Frankly, Jack preferred his statues.

In comparison to the rest of the office, the desk itself was virtually unchanged. There was even a picture frame sitting in the exact same corner as before, though Jack imagined the contents of the frame greatly differed. The man sitting at the desk jumped to his feet the moment Jack stepped out of the elevator and onto the marble floor. For a guy who inherited the same title as Jack, he didn't look particularly threatening. Tall, lean, and with immaculate hair, clothes that equaled the cost of an average man's mortgage, and legs that Jack wouldn't mind seeing wrapped around his hips. The man's age showed only in the touch of gray at his roots. Only one of his eyes looked real; the other glowed a brilliant blue, like water touched by moonlight. Jack's logical brain wanted to squeeze the life out of the guy and reclaim his throne. His illogical brain wanted to choke him a different way.

The man took several steps towards him, his eyes never leaving Jack's body. He could feel the intensity of the man's gaze scrutinizing every inch of him, as though inspecting for damage ... or maybe he was straight up checking him out. Jack smirked. "Dial it down a notch, sweetheart. Stare any longer and you'll burn a hole through me."

The man blinked in surprise. A hardness settled into his features, its arrival extinguishing the heat from his eyes. "Even your voice sounds much improved. Have you been talking to Loader Bot?"

Jack didn't bother asking why the man named his assistant Loader Bot when it clearly was not a loader bot. In that moment, his own recognition of the man's voice proved far too distracting. The same voice as the one in his head. Rhys.

"I haven't talked _to_ the bot so much as I've been talking _at_ it. That thing only talks to me when it wants to make some smartass remark." Jack closed the gap between them, repressing a smile at the shiver that seemed to travel down Rhys's spine when he stepped just a bit too close. "You know, for a second there, I really thought you were a hallucination. Good to know the voice in my head has a face. And a pretty face to boot."

For a split second, Rhys's expression went blank and Jack wondered, in mild disappointment, if he had prodded a little too hard. But then his lips twitched into a slow, sly curve, first one corner, then the other. "I heard you'd be a charmer."

"Oh really?" Jack murmured, daring to lean a little closer. "What else have you heard about me?"

Rhys stilled. His smile faltered, and then slipped altogether. "They also told me you're an egomaniac and a murderous psychopath. And that I'm crazy for bringing you back."

In the span of a few short seconds, their breezy flirtations dissolved to nothing, the entirety of their exchange leaving a bad aftertaste on Jack's tongue. From being hailed as a hero to being condemned as a psychopath in just fifteen years. Maybe legends didn't last so long after all. "So why did you revive a crazy asshole like me?" he asked, unable to hide the growl in his voice. "What the hell do you want?"

"What I want is for you to be my personal advisor." Rhys stated his reply clearly, without a hint of indecision.

Jack was caught so off-guard he took a full step back, palms pushing outwards as if in self-defense. "Uh, no. Hell no. Maybe you haven't noticed, princess, but I have exactly zero interest in becoming some guy's lackey."

"A lackey is the last thing I need. What I really want-" Rhys paused, glancing off to the side in uncertainty. When their gazes met once more, Jack saw a fire growing within Rhys, the flames licking at him with the same heat and intensity as when they first laid eyes on each other. "I want you to prove them wrong. I want you to show me that you're just as great as you claimed to be. Can you do that or not?"

There was a vulnerability in his voice, a cord of desperation thrumming through his words. A slight pressure blossomed in Jack's chest. He couldn't remember the last time someone had the gall to demand something of him—and certainly not to his face. Before he was fully cognizant of his own actions, the words "fine" and "watch and learn, princess" slipped from his mouth. It didn't matter what position Rhys gave him. He already clawed his way to the top of Hyperion once. He could do it again.

"So," Jack said, sidestepping Rhys. "Since I'm not your lackey, are we sharing this office? Because there is no way I'm working with the losers downstai-" Rhys grabbed Jack by the wrist, stopping him just before he reached his desk. Jack glanced down at Rhys's hand, then at his face, eyes narrowed in warning. "You realize this was originally _my_ desk, right?"

"Believe me, I'm aware. But before we go any further, there's something you should know." Rhys unfurled the palm of his cybernetic hand, activating a holographic screen. It displayed what appeared to be an intergalactic news feed. He tapped onto the entertainment section. "I think it's best if you just see for yourself."

A single photograph filled the width of the screen. It hit Jack like a punch to the gut, his breath trapped in his chest, head light as air. He processed it in small, revelatory flashes, like a weak signal filtered through long bursts of static. The picture was of a singer on a concert stage, a music festival according to the headline. He felt an initial uncertainty upon noting that the singer at the center of the photo had clean, unmarked arms. She was also noticeably older, more woman than girl. But the moment he looked into her eyes, he knew. They were the same bright eyes that smiled up at him from his picture frame, her happiness made permanent through the lens of a camera. The same eyes that glared at him with such hatred in her final moments.

The eyes of his baby. His Angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So. What do you think of him?"
> 
> 「HE CALLED ME A PUNK WHEN IN FACT HE IS THE PUNK. WE WILL NEVER BE FRIENDS.」
> 
> "Give it time. He'll grow on you."
> 
> Even with a single eye and no face to speak of, Loader Bot still managed to give Rhys a Look.
> 
> "Just tolerate him for now, alright? Please?"
> 
> 「...OKAY. FOR YOU.」


	2. Refrain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who read my previous fic: this story isn't a strict continuation, so some things will differ.
> 
> :D

The sky blazed turquoise as the sun retreated beyond the northern horizon. Clustered skyscrapers cast long shadows across the edges of the city, giving shade to the streetlamps as they came to life with a slow yawn of light. Angel rolled the sleeves of her baggy sweater, the cloth bunching at her elbows. She spread her arms wide in welcome to the encroaching darkness, a cool breeze tickling her bared skin.

Like most places on Eden-6, Nyx was a city best experienced at night. The streets seemed somehow brighter in the dark; the lights danced to the beat of the pavement, burning with enough strength to blot out the stars. Even in her own sleepy suburban neighborhood (Shy Willows—a name even Angel found a little too precious), the air felt thick with an infectious energy, like a buildup of static during an electric storm.

She peeled back the edge of her hood, allowing herself a glimpse of the glowing urban sprawl in the distance. The moonlight pressed upon her cheek and she smiled, secretly grateful for the small bit of exposure. Though the tepid warmth of late summer hung heavy in the wind, Sasha still insisted that Angel wear an extra layer of clothing to disguise herself: gold-rimmed sunglasses, a Hyperion baseball cap, and an oversized hoodie that dragged all the way to her knees. Her offstage outfits were beginning to match the ridiculousness of her onstage costumes. C'est la vie, she thought, casting her insecurities into the night.

Sasha yawned loudly from behind, her footsteps lagging by a few paces. "Barely sundown and I'm ready to hit the hay. I must be getting old."

"You can sleep if you want," Angel replied, tossing a smile over her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure I can handle walking three whole blocks on my own."

"Nah, I better not. Who knows what'll happen if I'm not around. You might go hog wild." Sasha ended the remark with a teasing wink. Her voice betrayed no apprehension, but it manifested in other ways: through the tension in her jaw, in her subdued smile, in the way her eyes lingered on the faint bruise circling Angel's wrist. It was no fault of Sasha's that the festival crowd had broken through the security line, rushed the stage and tugged at her like a rag doll—but as her manager, Sasha always handled her with the utmost care, as though the shallowest of drops might shatter her. Though the sheer abundance of her concern stifled Angel at times, it was likely the only reason Rhys allowed someone like Sasha to manage her; after all, fussing over her was just about the only commonality Sasha and Rhys shared.

When they arrived at the entrance of the diner, the turquoise sky had faded into a dusty midnight blue. More than any other color, this one most reminded her of Pandora and its long sleepless nights, the stars clear and bright even when seen through the eyes of a machine, its lens made coarse by wind and sand. Angel shivered at the memory. She unfurled the sleeves of her hoodie, hiding her arms once more.

As she reached the diner's threshold, a voice filled her mind, pleasant spikes of electricity heralding its arrival. " _Angel. Are you busy_?"

Her fingers lingered on the door handle, prompting a curious look from Sasha. "It's Rhys."

"Already? Huh. Something must have his designer panties in a twist for him to call you this early."

Sasha snickered at her own jab. Angel stifled an amused snort of her own as she shooed Sasha into the restaurant and out of Rhys's hearing range. She strolled along the edge of the mostly vacant parking lot, her soles scuffing the line where the sidewalk slanted into asphalt. Her finger probed the sensor hidden at the base of her throat as she said, "Well, this is rare. Are you having a slow night?"

She sensed a smile on Rhys's lips, a playful quirk of the mouth that complimented his lilting tone. " _Angel, dear. Now that I've outgrown most of the eligible bachelors in Hyperion,_ ** _all_** _my nights are slow._ "

Angel halted midstep, her foot hovering an inch above concrete. She made a point of wrinkling her nose, though no one was around to witness it. "Ew. I'm hanging up."

Rhys let out a quiet hiccup of a laugh, his breath catching in his throat. The laugh he only used in private, the one that warmed her chest as fully as a hearth in winter. " _Humor this lonely old man for a few more minutes, will you?_ "

"Only if you promise not to make any more references to your sex life. Or lack thereof."

" _Promise._ " She imagined that his smile had now widened to a grin. " _You're heading back to Eden-6 now, aren't you?_ "

"Actually, Sasha and I are already here. We decided to leave the festival right after my concert yesterday."

There was a momentary pause, a resting beat marking the shift in Rhys's thoughts. " _Is your wrist still sore?_ " he asked, the words a hushed murmur. Angel caught the rising concern kneaded into the layers of his voice, the strained notes ringing as true as the plucking of a finely tuned string. She had hoped her reassurances the night before would have soothed his worries.

The bruise peeked at her from under her sleeve, the paleness of her skin only amplifying the vividness of its color. "I'm fine," she said, adding a dash of cheer to her tone. "It's just a bruise, Rhys. It'll take a lot more than this to hurt me."

Her reply preceded a long, unnatural silence. Angel felt her pulse flutter in anticipation as the seconds plodded along, uninterrupted. "Rhys? Are you still there?"

" _Yeah, I'm here. Sorry, I've just ... had a lot on my mind today._ "

"Like what?" Rhys hesitated before responding, and in the span of a single breath, Angel realized that Sasha had guessed right. Something was wrong.

" _Angel, I-_ " Rhys seemed to choke on his own sentence, the bungled thoughts clogging his throat like a chunk of unchewed meat. When he next spoke, the question he posed was hardly the revelation Angel had been expecting. " _I was thinking that we're about due for a vacation, aren't we? Maybe we could squeeze in a week or two right before your tour starts._ "

There was a lie hidden somewhere in his words, a single discordant note amid the triumphant swell. When Angel failed to reply, Rhys hastily added, " _It's your turn to choose the destination. I have to make a few other calls before bed, but think about where you want to go, okay?_ "

"Sure," Angel mumbled, unable to muster even the affectation of enthusiasm.

" _Talk to you tomorrow. Love you. Good night._ "

"Love you too." Her voice trailed off as she lifted her fingers from the sensor, automatically ending the call. She shuffled back towards the diner entrance, her chest painfully tight, as if it were caught in the grip of a clenched fist.

Panicked whisperings bloated her mind. The suspicions she had tried to keep at bay polluted her thoughts once more, like a trail of waste cast to the shoreline, only to be reclaimed at high tide. As much as she wished to forget the entire incident, she could feel its ghostly presence within her, lurking alongside all her other unwanted memories, unseen but not erased.

This new apparition had haunted her for two months now, since the day she last visited Helios One. Sasha had intended for her visit to be a surprise, one that even Rhys had not been privy to. She remembered strolling down the station's long corridors, every door sliding open at her approach. Though Angel hated being cooped up in Helios for long, some small part of her took pleasure in all the privileges the place afforded her; as the only other person with the same security level as Rhys, the entire station seemed to bend to her every whim, as a servant would its master. As a siren, she was the brain of Helios; as a human, she was its beating heart.

At the time, she had a wrapped gift cradled in her arms: an unopened bottle of Rhys's favorite Dionysian red wine. The walls of his office were soundproof, so she couldn't tell whether she was potentially barging in on a business meeting ... but as she was armed with alcohol, Angel figured that whoever Rhys might be meeting with would forgive her intrusion.

The doors opened with a soft hiss. Rhys was facing the windows on the opposite wall, one of which had been converted to a monitor. As Rhys whipped around to look at her, his face contorted to an expression of pure shock. But guilt quickly diluted his surprise, causing him to divert his gaze to the floor in shame.

When Angel's eyes first landed on the tall monitor behind Rhys, it took several moments for her to process what she was looking at. A human face monopolized the screen ... or rather, a digital simulation of a face. Angel's body reacted quicker than her mind, her heart rattling in warning as the face redirected its gaze to her. The color of the projection—a shimmering blue glaze that characterized the face's hair, eyes, and skin—did little to obscure her recognition of its shape: the strong cut of his jaw, the high-arching brows, the metal hinges marrying mask to skin. The face that had been burned into her mind for twenty lonesome, torturous years. The face of the man who imprisoned her.

His mouth was caught somewhere between a grimace and a snarl, his voice reverberating off the walls and echoing at her from all directions. "Is that ... Angel? What the hell are you doing outside the Control Core?"

There was a fleeting silence, then the sound of something shattering. A scream tore its way through her throat, cutting through the domed space with the sharpness of a blade. In the next second, she was running back through the hallway, back to the elevator, back to the shuttle that would whisk her away from the nightmare she now fled. She gasped at the sudden nostalgic tightness of her throat, the familiar suffocation. She felt thirteen again, clawing at her father's arms as he pinned her by the neck and collared her for the first time.

A hand grasped her wrist, and for a fevered, delirious moment, Angel thought it was her father, her real father come to lock her away once more ... until she realized that this hand was smoother than her father's had been. Gentler.

The pressure at her wrist softened then retreated altogether. A pair of arms, one flesh and one metal, crossed the front of her shoulders, embracing her from behind. Her fingers automatically shot up to clutch his forearms, like a conditioned reflex. She realized with a belated disappointment that the giftwrapped wine bottle had slipped from her arms at some point and was likely now in pieces.

Tears flooded her eyes, flowing down her cheeks in thin rivulets before dripping onto Rhys's sleeve. She felt a pang of guilt as she watched the growing tearstain; it wasn't the first suit of his that she'd ruined with her crying.

Rhys pulled her closer to his chest and pressed his lips against the crown of her head. "Angel, I'm ... I'm sorry. I should've told you the moment we uncovered him."

If it weren't for the gravity of their situation, Angel might have expressed some amusement at the word "uncovered", as if the AI were a fossil they dug up from the dirt. But her shock outweighed all other emotions, even the anger she should have felt towards Rhys for keeping such a large secret from her. She turned within the circle of his arms, glimpsing his small, reassuring smile as she buried her face against his chest. "Where did he even come from? And why is he in your office?"

She felt his flesh arm tense in response to her second question. "Someone in Acquisitions found him in a pile of old Hyperion tech that we repossessed from Pandora. I'm trying to determine how complete of an AI he is." Rhys threaded his fingers through the loose strands of hair at the nape of her neck. In a quieter voice, he added, "He doesn't seem to know about your death."

In other words, he was virtually unchanged from the man she had known in her first life. The memory alone traced a shiver down her spine. "What are you going to do with him?"

"What do you think I should do?"

Angel dug her nails into the lapels of his suit. Only one answer came to mind, pounding through her head like the somber beat of a drum. "I think you should delete him." She lifted her face, daring herself to look Rhys in the eye. "Will you?"

His smile faltered almost imperceptibly, his expression an otherwise perfect picture of composure. He leaned down to plant a small kiss on her forehead as he murmured, "We locked him into my private server, so he can't reach the company network at all. He's like a caged pet. You don't need to worry about it, okay? We have him under control."

Instead of relief, his words only inspired a budding dread. Her father never gave control; he only took it from others. But despite her misgivings, Angel nodded and hugged Rhys once more. She wanted so badly to believe him.

As their embrace loosened, Angel felt another smaller pair of hands gently tug at her shoulders, prying her away from Rhys. She peeked over her shoulder and was surprised to see Yvette, who flashed her a cautious smile. "Sorry to interrupt, but Rhys needs to get back to his office." She paused to give Rhys a wordless nod. "I can escort Angel to the lounge. Loader Bot is already on standby."

Rhys gave her hand one last reassuring squeeze before stepping just out of reach. "I'll join you in a few minutes," he said as he turned back towards his office doors, which he approached with a hurried gait.

Angel's gaze lingered on his retreating back as Yvette guided her down the hall and into the waiting elevator. "Don't worry, honey," Yvette said as she punched the button for the floor directly below them. "Bringing _you_ back is one thing. But Handsome Jack?" Her eyes narrowed, as if she were glaring at something beyond the walls. "Even Rhys isn't crazy enough to give that murderous son of a bitch a body. Not when we've spent the past decade trying to distance Hyperion from anything and everything he touched."

Angel had said nothing at the time, too lost in her own doubt and confusion to brood over the mind of another. And now, after dwelling on the incident for two months, her budding dread had only grown larger, its vines choking her from within.

She reflexively squinted upon entering the brightly lit diner, her eyes struggling to adjust. After a few seconds of searching, she spotted Sasha sitting hunched in a booth towards the back, phone pressed to her ear. A glass of water waited for her on the opposite side of the table.

She quietly slid into her seat as Sasha finished her call. "...If you've already booked the timeslot, then the only thing left is to draw up the contracts... Okay, great. I'll have her lawyer look at it in the morning. We owe you one, Moxx."

Angel's ears perked up at the name. "Was that Moxxi?" she asked once Sasha hung up.

"Yup. I don't know who she had to kill to do it, but she nabbed you the headline spot at Fluxxwave. You know, that crazy concert in the middle of the ocean? The one with the dolphins?" When Angel failed to respond with little more than a slow nod, Sasha's voice took on a gentler tone. "You look like something's bothering you. Bad news from Rhys?"

"Not exactly, but..." A sigh swallowed up the remainder of her thought. She switched gears, deciding to instead ask, "You've known Rhys for a long time, right?"

"Unfortunately yes."

"Did you know him back when Jack was still alive?"

Sasha froze, her own drinking glass hovering an inch short of her mouth. "No. Jack had been dead for about a year when we first met." She paused to set her glass back onto the table, eyes glinting coldly in the light. "Why do you ask?"

Angel wasn't certain why herself. She knew only that there was a buzzing at the back of her mind, a question that demanded to be answered. "I just don't understand. Why is Rhys so obsessed with my father, even now that he knows all the terrible things he did? Rhys has already achieved everything my father ever did and more. Shouldn't he have moved on by now?" She slumped back into her seat, surprised at her own sputtering, uncorked resentment.

Sasha simply stared at her for a long while, quiet save for the clinking of ice cubes in her stirred glass. "I'm sure this isn't news to you," she began, the words slow, as if she were lingering on each vowel, "But Rhys isn't the type of person to sit around feeling content with his life. He's always chasing after something, even if it's something impossible. And Jack, self-obsessed maniac that he was, is the perfect, unobtainable thing for Rhys to pine over. It's like a match made in hell." She ended with a scoff, then downed her glass in a single gulp.

A few moments later, their waiter arrived with a basket of fries, effectively killing their conversation. Eventually, they moved on to more mundane topics: Angel's schedule for the next couple days, the stops for her summer tour, how her songs were charting in the nearby planets. But all throughout, her recent conversations with Rhys weighed heavily on her mind. She revisited that moment in the hallway over and over, filling the blank spaces, the words Rhys tried to keep hidden.

She had asked Rhys to delete Jack. But Rhys never said yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  "What are you going to do with him?"
> 
> "What do you think I should do?"
> 
> Angel dug her nails into the lapels of his suit. "I think you should put Jack where he belongs: in the trash."
> 
> Rhys then realized that Jack received his scar not from the vault, but from Angel's sick burns.


	3. Reimage

The thing that no one, not even Angel, realized was that opening the vault cost Jack more than just his face. The vault didn't only brand—it extracted too, and with all the ruthlessness of a practiced surgeon. If he dwelled on it long enough, he could almost make out the pattern, the unknowable logic to the memories it took and the ones it left behind. He no longer remembered Angel's first words, her first steps, or any of her firsts for that matter. But there was a certain memory that stuck, one of the few clear signals amid the static.

He recalled the sensations of autumn: the colors, the crisp breeze, the crunch of dried leaves punctuating Angel's every tottering step. She was a tiny nugget of a child, still chubby in the face and barely tall enough to reach his knees. The park was mostly empty that day, and so Angel waddled aimlessly around the wilted fields, pausing only to burble out an occasional string of gibberish.

At some point, Jack allowed his gaze to wander onto his opened textbook cradled on his lap, keeping track of Angel through the sound of her voice alone. Between classes, his internship at Hyperion, and taking care of Angel, he barely had time to catch his breath, much less study.

He had been skimming a long dry passage about free particles when his ears picked up on an odd utterance. Angel's vocabulary spanned all of twenty words (her favorites being "mama", "dada", "no", and of course "mine"), so it was easy to filter out the real words from the nonsense. And though it was his first time hearing Angel say it, the sound was unmistakable: "Doggy!"

Jack looked up and instantly leapt to his feet, his book dropping onto the grass with a muted thunk. A shaggy, unkempt creature stood not five feet from Angel, teeth bared, its grey fur speckled with dirt and grime. At its full height, the mutt reached Angel's shoulders—just tall enough to lunge at her throat with its maw. Jack called Angel's name, his voice thrumming with a rising panic, but she already began inching closer, hand outstretched in greeting.

The dog's eyes flared as it barked once in warning, startling Angel into tripping over her own feet and falling backwards onto the ground. There was a gap in Jack's recollection, a precious few seconds that had been spliced from his mind, because the next thing he remembered was the whining noise the mutt made as his boot connected with its ribs. It limped away, eyes wide with fear, and then let out a wounded cry as it sprinted in the opposite direction.

Angel let out a cry of her own as she watched its retreat. "Dada no!" She craned her neck to meet his gaze, her expression a complex mixture of anger, confusion, and dismay. It was a look he would learn to know well in the coming years.

He said nothing at first and wordlessly reached down to lift Angel up by her armpits. But Angel kicked and flailed in protest, forcing Jack to plop her back down onto the grass. "No!" she yelled once more, glaring at him.

He gritted his teeth, irritation swelling within him. "That thing was going to bite you, Angel! Is that what you want? Why are you so stupid?" The moment he spat the words out, Jack felt an instant, crushing regret.

Angel's bottom lip trembled, her eyes brimming with tears. Even at that young age, she never wailed like other children; instead she sobbed quietly, emitting only the occasional whimper.

Jack stood there for a long while, his hands balled into fists at his side. Though he felt the pain of his own guilt stabbing at his chest, deep down he knew he wasn't wrong. His daughter was too nice, too trusting of others—hell, of the whole rotten world. What other kid would approach a wild fucking animal so obliviously?

He had hoped she would outgrow it, that it would drain out of her with adulthood, but it never did. Then one day, years and years later, that faith in others killed her, just as he always feared it would.

And as he now watched what must've been the dozenth video of her prancing onstage before a sweaty, screaming horde, he sensed a rekindling of that old anxiety, as if he were regressing to his idiotic twenty-three year old self who stared slack-jawed as his daughter offered herself to some rabid beast. He ended the video with the click of a button, a sick roiling in his gut.

"I didn't even think she knew how to sing," he muttered, mostly to himself.

Rhys barely spared him a sidelong glance before returning his attention to the news marquee dominating his screen. His cybernetic eye glowed softly as it zeroed in on the endless scroll of text, prompting Jack to wonder if he ever turned the damn thing off. "Really?" Rhys asked with a practiced nonchalance. "She sings to herself pretty often."

Jack's brow ticked in annoyance. Just one day in and already he sensed an arrogance in the other man's tone, a presumption of superiority that came rearing whenever he so much as mentioned Angel. With a malicious smirk, Jack closed the gap between them in a few short strides then leaned in close—close enough that Rhys's whole body stiffened. "Yeah? Well I was a little too distracted by the whole crazy-ass-superpowers thing to notice she could hold a note. Trust me, cupcake, when your daughter sprouts a pair of wings the same day she buys her first training bra, music camp kinda goes out the window."

Rhys's lips curved into a small, indulgent smile, the same one he used whenever Jack said just about anything. "She does seem to miss her wings ... and not much else. But I'll admit, if we could figure out how to manufacture sirens, Hyperion would be a lot richer than it already is."

Jack turned the words over in his mind. They had barely spoken of Angel since the previous day, when Rhys had told him that his daughter was alive—and had in fact been alive for the past seven years. The rest he figured out on his own ... all but one thing, the one question mark still swimming in his head.

He rested his weight against the edge of the desk, finally luring the other man's gaze from the screen. "Alright, princess, so I understand how you got your hands on _my_ AI. I mean, it was inevitable that at least one of you pathetic losers would create a digital version of me to beat off to." He paused and studied Rhys's carefully neutral face, awash with the faint blue light from his still-glowing eye. "But Angel's should've been impossible to build. Her mind was friggin' massive. Even I couldn't have figured it out, much less the bozos who worked for me."

Rhys fixed him with a slow look, his eye humming as it burned an even brighter shade of blue. "You want to know how we made her brain."

Jack wordlessly crossed his arms, allowing the silence to answer for him. The smile returned to Rhys's lips as he uncurled his chrome fingers and projected an image from the palm of his hand. A diagram of a knotted web hovered in the air between them, its threads crossing and twining together like the branches of a gnarled tree. Pinpricks of pure white light speckled its interior, tracing the web's winding paths like a spreading rash.

Rhys used his flesh hand to gesture at the web's outer shell, "If this was the inner network of Helios about twelve years ago, then this-" His fingers swept across the stream of light, mapping the dots like constellations, " _This_ was Angel. She buried little crumbs of herself everywhere, bits and pieces of her code that she scattered throughout the network. She gave us everything we needed."

Jack's gaze lingered on the starry trail twinkling beneath Rhys's fingertips. When he failed to respond, Rhys added, "Judging by your reaction, I'm guessing Angel never told you?"

"No," Jack said, his mouth flattening to a thin, hard line as he added yet another mental bulletpoint to the growing list of things Angel had kept from him. Were he not primed to expect constant disappointment, it might've disturbed Jack to realize how little he had known—how little the vault's visions had prepared him for what laid ahead. His own daughter foresaw Death and welcomed its approach; Jack taunted Death from across the street and got curbstomped. The whole thing had the poisonous sting of a dark punchline, like the demented jokes his grandma used to tell.

Rhys closed the image with a sudden clenching of his fist, ripping Jack from his increasingly morbid thoughts. "Sorry to cut things short, but I have a meeting with HR to discuss hiring goals." With a coy lift of his brow, Rhys asked, "Wanna tag along? It's sure to be riveting."

Jack replied with a scoff. "An HR meeting? Seriously? C'mon, princess, don't you have flunkies to do all that tedious crap for you?"

"I prefer to take a more hands-on approach." As Rhys stood and rounded the corners of the desk, Jack's eyes surrendered to the inevitable gravitational tug towards the other man's ass, impressively pert for a man his age and nicely outlined by his tight-fitting crème slacks. It was a view he could see himself getting used to.

In the heat of the moment, Jack considered a quip about the two of them taking a more "hands-on" approach with one another. But he knew, with a deep and bitter clarity, that only a thin barrier separated desire from desperation—and stumbling across that divide was a stupid, amateurish move. So instead, Jack slumped into the now-vacant chair and said, "Suit yourself, cupcake. Try not to keel over from boredom, alright?"

"Thanks for the concern, but I've lived through worse." Rhys glanced at him from over his shoulder, flashing an ominous smile just as the office doors slid shut.

Then the room was silent, save for the slow creak of the swivel chair as Jack surveyed his surroundings. Even when alone, he felt the prickling sensation of watchful, unseen eyes. No doubt the damn assistant bot still observed his every movement, even now that he had rid himself of his limp.

The computer lockscreen taunted him from atop the desk. Spurred by mutinous impulse, Jack splayed his fingers across the keyboard in full view of the hidden cameras likely pointed in his direction. He recalled the override code with ease, tugging each letter and number from his own jumbled memory. Upon entering the code, he received an error message written in an obnoxiously large red font:

> Nice try, Jack. :)

He smirked through his own annoyance. Looked like the pretty boy had a brain afterall.

He heard the hiss of the doors opening and half-expected the assistant bot to come barreling in brandishing a gun. But the newcomer had an unmistakably human form: a woman made entirely of sharp lines and hard edges, dressed to kill in weighted stiletto heels that knocked on the floor tiles with all the loudness of a gavel. Metal-rimmed glasses framed a severe gaze, her eyes wide with surprise one moment, then narrow with suspicion in the next. She stopped several feet short of the desk, hands planted onto her hips as she judged Jack's reclined form. "Where's Rhys?"

Jack swung his feet atop the desk, smirking as the woman pursed her lips in disapproval. "He's at some HR meeting." He paused to give her a quick once-over. Despite spending the entirety of the previous day lounging around the office, he hadn't seen anyone enter aside from Rhys. "More importantly, who the hell are you supposed to be? The help?"

The woman flared her nostrils, reminding Jack of a bull he once saw just before it gored its opponent. "Try CFO. And my name's Yvette." With a smile glazed in malice, she added, "Jackass."

"Just Jack is good, sweetheart." Jack flashed an equally venomous smile, his fingers twitching for a gun he no longer had. His eyes wandered downwards and caught the conspicuous metallic glint peeking out from the holster at the woman's cocked hip. Considering the reception he had gotten so far, he'd have been more wary if she _weren't_ packing heat.

Jack locked his fingers behind his head, confident despite the supposed danger. "Anyway, the pretty boy ain't here. So if you don't have any business with me then get the hell out."

"Rhys might let you hang around, but that doesn't make this _your_ office."

"Uh, yeah, the fact that I built this whole frickin' station myself is what makes this _my_ office." Jack leapt to his feet and hunched over the desk, knuckles pressed white against its granite surface. Barely two minutes and already he hated this chick, VP or not. "Your lot may have overrun the place like a bunch of filthy squatters, but that sure doesn't mean you own the damn thing."

Yvette drummed her fingers against her elbow, considering her next words with an eerie calm. Jack's eyes wandered to the pistol strapped to her hip. He wondered whether she was any good at using the thing. "I wouldn't be so certain," she said after a pause. "This office isn't the only thing you've lost, you know. A lot has changed since you got yourself killed."

"Like what?" Jack asked, choosing to ignore her blatant insult—for the moment. "What are these mindblowing developments, huh? You moved my statues to storage? Elpis isn't mooning me with its whirling asscrack? Whoop de frickin doo."

If anything, Yvette's smile only widened, the sight of it sending a sweeping chill down Jack's spine. "Wanna know the truth? There's a book in the upstairs library called 'Modern Pandoran History'. Skip to the chapter that shares your name. I'm sure you'll find it _very_ interesting."

She showed her back to him and left without another word. Jack watched her exit through narrowed eyes, his mind already formulating ways to royally screw the lady over. Only after the doors had shut and blocked her from view did he gaze towards the staircase leading to the second-floor balcony. Two things occurred to him:

  1. Some idiot had actually bothered to record the history of a shithole like Pandora.
  2. If history was written by the victors, then the damned vault hunters probably wrote a ten-page essay about him dying like a bitch at Lilith's feet.



With gritted teeth, Jack stalked towards the staircase and climbed, the pounding of his own footsteps trailing his ascent.

It turned out to be less of a library and more of a nook with a few bookcases. A layer of fuzzy dust had settled onto the shelves, coating the spines of the books and obscuring the titles. Jack grimaced in disdain ( _clearly_ Rhys was not a reading man) before drawing a deep breath and scattering the dust with a gust of air. His lungs seemed clogged with the stuff by the time he finally spotted the book: a red tome bound in faux leather, the title stamped onto the front in gold foil. Another cloud of dust wafted into the air as he pried the slightly sticky pages open and flipped straight to the table of contents. He zeroed in on a twelve-page chapter titled, "The Vault of the Warrior and the End of the Handsome Jack Regime".

His brow ticked in annoyance at the word regime. "Bandit-loving hack," he muttered, cursing at no one as he navigated to the chapter. Skimming the first paragraph only fanned the flames of his growing irritation:

> _Amongst canonical historical texts, Pandoran history is often described as cyclical. If one were to plot the timeline of Pandoran society in the shape of a sine wave, one would see a planet that lives in the extreme edges of the political spectrum: a people who are at any point either caught within the updraft of anarchic autonomy and self-rule, or anchored by the oppressive weight of an often cultish authoritarianism. Though not in any way unique in the strength of his military tactics nor in his ideological rhetoric, Handsome Jack stands a head above Pandora's long line of demagogues in one aspect alone: his miraculously quick ascent to power and his equally swift demise._

"What in the fuck?" Jack spat, gripping so tightly that his nails drew half-moons onto the book's outer skin. He reread the passage once more, as if hoping the words would rearrange themselves in an order that would make sense to him. Upon finding that he had in fact read the passage as intended, Jack flung the book across the room, watching with vindictive satisfaction as the pages smacked into the wall then slid, landing on the floor with a slap.

Jack ran both hands through his hair, unnerved to hear the anxious pounding of his own heartbeat, begging him for reassurance. The author, whoever they were, had to be some kind of shill. Maybe a professor at a third-rate Eden university paid to spew bandit propaganda at the masses. He scanned the bookshelves with renewed purpose and managed to scout only one other history book amidst the collection, this one titled, "The Eridians: Past, Present, and Future". He discovered that all mentions of himself were relegated to a single page in a chapter on Pandoran vaults:

> _The exact contents of the Vault of the Sentinel remain unknown to this day. However, reasonable assumptions can be made based on the exploits of the vault's greatest beneficiary. As it is an uncontested fact that Handsome Jack owed much of his success to the advent of eridium, scholars widely believe that the Vault bestowed him with knowledge pertaining to it. This knowledge likely included methods for weaponizing eridium, as well as the approximate locations of the mines on Pandora (Culver, pg. 483). The plundering that followed, as well as the extensive damage that Handsome Jack wrought upon the planet and its people, are well documented in countless other texts. However, these texts have largely overlooked Handsome Jack's more personal connections to the Eridians._
> 
> _Though his facial scar was the Vault's most visible alteration, recent studies suggest that the Vault affected far more than his physical appearance. Handsome Jack's brainscans, leaked onto the ECHOnet shortly after his death, show wide lacerations in the dorsal and ventral prefrontal cortex, as well as deep incisions in the amygdala—all this, despite having never undergone brain surgery nor having had any record of massive head trauma (Gueverra, pg. 124-7)._
> 
> _Despite the abundance of historical evidence demonstrating the advanced surgical abilities of Eridian technology, Handsome Jack is an exceptional case due to the severity of the effects. The irreparable damage inflicted upon him helps to demystify his gravest crime: the imprisonment and eventual murder of his own daughter, now known to have been one of the universe's rare sirens (Farrow, pg. 980). For Handsome Jack, the cost of opening the Vault had been great indeed._

Jack's gaze lingered on the last sentence of the passage, all anger gutted from him and replaced with something subtler, like bubbling magma welling up from deep within. He pinched the edge of the page and tugged, tearing the sheet from its binding. The book clattered to the floor as he stood and descended the flight of stairs, then headed for the electronic fireplace carved into the same spot that once held his trophy case.

Though the hearth was bereft of any kindling, the flick of a switch easily summoned a column of tall blue flames. Jack prodded the newborn fire with the torn page. The flames greedily nipped at the paper, its edges darkening and curling with every lick. Then Jack flicked his wrist and abandoned the entire sheet to the fire, which consumed it in an instant, the inked words immolating before his eyes like another lost memory.

There had been a truth to the words that even Jack couldn't deny. If the Vaults had taught him anything, it was that the mind was malleable—and identity a deceptive mask.

He remade himself once before. He could damn well do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Do you still remember the day your wings first sprouted?"
> 
> Angel blinked in surprise, the watermelon juices wrinkling her fingers as she paused mid-slice. Rhys's call had been abrupt, and his question even moreso. "Well, yeah. That sort of thing is pretty hard to forget."
> 
> "Is it true that it happened the same day you got your first training bra?"
> 
> She let out a sound embarrassingly close to a squeak, the knife connecting with the cutting board with a little too much force. "How-wha-wh-w-"
> 
> "Aww," Rhys cooed with a teasing chuckle. "Siren puberty."
> 
> If nothing else, Angel was at least glad that Rhys was unable to see her face. "I'm-I'm hanging up," she muttered. And then she did.


End file.
